Darkclaw.mp4

A lot of cartoons I grew up watching were great. They were entertaining, funny and even rather smart. But I guess even the simplest cartoons can have that one dark moment which could leave you scarred for life and traumatized. I'll just cut to the chase. I was using this file manager thing you can get on Google Chromebooks called Firedrive, and while I was checking through my download history, I saw an .mp4 file which I don't recall downloading. It was called "Darkclaw.mp4" and it seemed alright, so I clicked on the file and opened it up.

It was a clip of a cartoon rat, and not just any rat, but a rat from Redwall, my favourite childhood cartoon! The rat's name was Darkclaw, and I'd always liked him, btu something seemed a little off in this clip. Darkclaw wasn't saying anything or doing anything cute like normal. Instead, he was just lolloping along through the woods. But the wood seemed different. Over the course of the silent clip, it began to look dark and eerie. The trees were taller and were closer together. It began to look like the middle of the night, but there was no light or any fireflies or anything at all. Darkclaw just continued waddling along, with no expression on his face.

Suddenly, there was sound. A faint murmuring was heard, and the noise of footsteps, but they sounded as though a group of about twenty people were marching together. Shortly after this noise was heard, the murmurs turned into groans, like someone was complaining. Darkclaw began to look worried. I was getting pretty freaked out by now, and tried to get out of the video, but nothing worked. I couldn't even shut down my computer or anything. The unsettling noises went on for a minute more, before Darkclaw slowly stopped walking and turned to look at the camera. He screamed. What shocked me the most though, was that his voice wasn't that of his voice actor. He sounded like he was being voiced by a teenage girl. "I WANT TO GO HOME!" he screamed. There was the sound of an engine revving, and the terrifying crunch of a body being run over, but I couldn't see all this because the screen cut to black two seconds after Darkclaw screamed.

The screen stayed black for a few minutes, and when it came back on, the video had changed to some kind of news report, about a giant, overweight, mutant rat coming out of Nelvana studios, where Redwall was made, and killing about 24 people. The monster had been dubbed "Darkclaw" because of its physical resemblance with the cartoon character.

I still don't know how the hell that file got onto my computer, and I don't think I'll ever find out. Redwall will always be my favourite cartoon, but it'll never be the same after I watched that forsaken .mp4 file.